


Sixty-Eight

by soyuz



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: 1968, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 04:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3474131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soyuz/pseuds/soyuz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles and Hawkeye, building a life together.</p>
<p>Established relationship, post-canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sixty-Eight

**Author's Note:**

> This was written years ago, intended as the beginning of an epic post-war tale of Hawkeye and Charles reconnecting at an antiwar protest and running a free clinic together in Boston during the tumultuous year of 1968. Unfortunately, I don't think I have that story in me. What I do have is a handful of disjointed vignettes from that setting that I'd like to eventually post, as this is an idea I've never really been able to let go of. These two are pretty much my forever-OTP -- they are SO alike, and I think that out of everyone, they came home the closest to broken. 
> 
> (PS: I changed Charles's nephew Felix to his COUSIN Felix, because...it just makes way more sense.)

On January 1st, 1968, Charles Winchester bade his parents farewell and moved out of their Beacon Hill estate. His mother cried— somewhat affectedly, he thought dispassionately— and his father retreated to his study in stony silence. Honoria embraced him with warmth, promising to visit often. Agnes, their housekeeper, wept unabashedly— with more maternal affection than his own mother— and sent him off with a foil-wrapped casserole.

He took few of his belongings— most of his library, a photo album or two, and a hopelessly outdated, battered phonograph that looked like it had been through a war. The state-of-the-art player that his cousin Felix had given him last Christmas was still in the box. He left that for Agnes to give to her grandson. 

(His album collection was already somewhat diminished— he had given all of his surviving Mozart recordings to the Goodwill within days of his return from Korea.)

When he met Hawkeye Pierce at the door of the rundown urban clinic that would now serve as both their home and medical practice, it was nearly midnight. 

"I have dinner," Charles said by way of greeting, pointing at the casserole with the only unencumbered part of his body, his chin. Pierce grinned at him, trying to tug it from his hands.

"Ooh, is it meatloaf?" he asked excitedly, raising the corner of the foil to peek inside. Charles, already off-balance from the heavy rucksack slung over one shoulder, took a step back.

"It most is certainly not! Would you _stop_ —" Charles stopped mid-sneer, attempting to bat the other man's hands away from the dish while staying upright. The laws of physics won, and Charles ended up on the ground, casserole miraculously intact.

From his crumpled heap on the doorstep, Charles looked up at Pierce, who was simply an indistinct silhouette against the street lights. _He looks so young in this light,_ he realized with a start, almost losing himself to a sudden rush of memories.

"Well," Pierce murmured with a hint of an nervous grin, "this is a lot easier than carrying you over the threshold." And then, after scanning the street for observers, Pierce knelt beside him— and then their lips briefly brushed—

and the casserole was forgotten.


End file.
